The production stars Kristine Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann and sees the director update Puccini's tale of a young woman seduced by love, and then by money to a more contemporary setting. 'It was one of Puccini's early successes because of that relationship and the doomed love affair. [It contains] some of the greatest music Puccini ever wrote,' Jonathan Kent said in a recent interview we filmed with him about the production. Antonio Pappano will conduct.

Though tickets for performances at Covent Garden are nearly sold out, the production will be relayed live to cinemas on 24 June. It's the last of this Season's cinema screenings and well worth considering if you haven't tried the opera-in-cinemas experience before.

This article has 6 comments

Will be watching this production live at the cinema in Forcalquier, Provence along with many friends. Brilliant idea which enables people from all over the world to see such fantastic ballet and opera performances. Thank you. A bientot!

Unfortunately, I cannot make it to the live cinema relay of Manon Lescaut. This may be a little premature, but are there any plans to release the production on DVD? If not, are there any encore screenings planned?

I am in New York, US, frustrated that apparently the June 24 "live in cinemas" is not available here. Firstly, am I correct about that? And secondly, are there possibly belated screenings here? Your website gives me 2 July dates, 17 and 20, for my local movie house, neither of which they have on their schedules, although they do list July 29, which your site does not list. I love that you are doing "live in cinemas", but wish your website would supply accurate information.
PS...I LOVE the live streaming and hope you will do more of that in future.
Thanks to ROH from a US opera lover.

Thank you for your query - I believe that our US distributor does take performances after the 'live' window, but that does not explain the discrepancy you have noticed on our website. I have passed your query on to the cinema team and will share their response.